Scream Without Raising Your Voice

DRIVE (2011)

Once in a while you get to watch a movie which enraptures your senses, puts you in a trance, shocks you and stirs your soul. This one does a wee bit more than that. It even makes you feel. Nicolas Winding Refn won Best Director at Cannes this year. Half an hour into the movie, I understood why he won it over names like Terrence Malick, Aki Kaurismaki, Lars von Trier, The Dardenne Brothers and Pedro Almodovar. Of course they have all won a Cannes prize before (for their film or for directing) but you mustn't obfuscate the issue at hand, my faithful reader. Refn who's my object of appreciation here, uses the tools of filmmaking and crafts a film that is perfect in every way. (Relatively, of course) (Rolls eyes). This is film directing at its finest.

Although, this shiny vehicle is driven by Refn, it is Ryan Gosling who is riding shotgun, playing the role of the trusty navigator (It should be the other way round, you say?). Gosling, who plays Driver, has probably never looked better in any film before. But let's not talk about looks and shallow stuff like that. This isn't Fast and Furious, after all. Gosling takes a leaf out the performances by Alain Delon in Le Samourai (1967) and Ryan O'Neil in The Driver (1978) and uproots the performance of the year. He doesn't talk too much. His persona speaks, his actions speak and most importantly his face speaks. Ryan Gosling so early in his career has mastered the art of a facial performance. He has a gift, a gift very few actors share. You pleasantly watch the smile, the twitches and the wrinkles do the talk just what he exhibited earlier in Lars and the Real Girl (2007).

The first scene is reminiscent of The Driver (1978), the film also has much in common with Michael Mann's Thief (1981) and William Friedkin's To Live and Die in L.A. (1985). Then come the pink opening titles over a song (Nightcall, if you wish to know) which casts the spell, setting up the rest of the mesmerizing 80 minutes. Drive is mainly centered on a man with no name, who gets involved in a web of bizarrely convoluted yet eventual circumstances. His job would have brought him here sooner or later. There is a meet-cute as well, a typical one. Enter Carey Mulligan. Their lives not so typical. Very soon you are reminded that this isn't a romantic comedy meet-cute. Now here's why this film worked for me. The unspoken romance. Undefined, unfulfilled. Ah, the stuff that breaks the heart. The enthralling finale is what made the movie for me. As genre film, it is inexhaustibly progressive.

Be warned, this ain't no mush. The female faction might have bought a ticket to drool over Mr. Gosling but your wide eyes may not remain so throughout the course of the movie. (Oh how I generalize) The violence and the gore is jolting (which the Indian Censor Board takes care of) (Fail hashtag). Now the alpha males, (Generalizing is fun, admit it), you bought a ticket to watch an action film. While you may be deprived of one, in a conventional sense. There is a car chase. And yes, it is awesome, bruh.

My favorite scene has to be the ying and ying one. I call it so because it surges into supreme romance and then plunges into extreme violence in one space and time, only elongated by the (wait for it) - Slow friggin' Motion!

The drone-soaked electronic score by Cliff Martinez makes sure the hypnosis is perpetual. Full marks to Newton Thomas Sigel for the exquisite cinematography. (If nothing else, these two Oscar nominations should be in the bag but they won't be). Drive is a nostalgic work of art in it's most lovably diluted form. This is one of my favorite films of the year.

Rating: